Month: July 2015

This post is about my talk on Firefox Student Ambassadors (FSA) program as part of the tech-evangelism workshop in Bangalore.

The mission of the FSA program is to promote, support and educate the core values of the Mozilla mission, open-source and free software projects. It is targeted towards college students, irrespective of their streams or fields of study. At the core is the Mozilla mission which is to promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the Web. True to its nature, the FSA program accomplishes just that – by breaking barriers for new (enthusiastic) folk to contribute to the community on a global scale.

One of the ways the FSA program accomplishes it is through the means of events and activities on campus. The reason for this is that events attract a lot of interested students, and act as a forum for positive discussions. Events are usually focused on Mozilla products and initiatives – but not necessarily limited to it. Topics for discussions include open source software, privacy, WoMoz (Women in Mozilla) and a lot more. A discussion of this sort (focused on a central theme) can be termed as a MozCofffee session. An ideal audience size for this would be around 10-15 people and not more than that. If the size of the crowd increases, then there might be chances of missing each one’s opinion. Moving on, the next kind of activity a club can host is the Sign-Up festival where a club lead takes up the responsibility of recruiting interested FSAs by talking about Mozilla mission and the opportunities that are available. Maker parties are another category of events that clubs can take up to ensure the spread of web literacy and also increase the enthusiasm level of the participants.

An important thing to note here is the processes involved in hosting an event. It’s usually recommended to follow these steps in the same order by the organizer:

Apply for permission with campus authorities

Decide resource persons for the event and make sure they are available

Coordinate dates and decide a feasible one

Allocate an accessible auditorium/seminar-hall/computer lab/ classroom as per your need

Invite audience from and off campus – analyze their demography and skill set beforehand

Set up the technical equipment (projectors, speakers, etc) and make sure they work

Inform participants the location of the venue without any ambiguity

Measure the impact created using sign-up forms or social media tools

Hope this article throws enough light on club activities and helps throwing better and structured events in the future. Comments and feedback, most welcome.